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Friday, August 24, 2012

Netflix, Inc.(NASDAQ:NFLX) Denies Responsibility for Jacking up TV Content Rates in the U.K.

Video content provider Netflix, Inc.(NASDAQ:NFLX) said on
Thursday that the company is prepared to pay a "tremendous amount of
money" to buy the exclusive rights to popular films and television shows.

A senior executive in the company said that it had faith in
the potential of the market and that was why was investing large amounts of
money in it.

Ted Sarandos, chief content officer of Netflix, was
responding to criticism levlelled against the company that it was paying
exorbitant rates to buy exclusive content in the video-on-demand market in the
United Kingdom.

He also denied that Netflix was responsible in any way for
jacking up the prices of television and online content in the UK. There have been
reports that the cost of buying online rights for UK television content have
risen almost ten-fold since the company launched its services in the country
and Ireland in January this year.

To a specific query on this Sarandos told the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International
Television Festival, ""That's funny … the way my licensing team works
is that if something gets viewed a tremendous amount of times, let's pay a
tremendous amount of money to get it.

"It's not like we've just dropped into town and started
dropping money on this thing. We've been doing this in the US, which is also a
difficult media market, for over six years. This is a big business and a big
market and, yes, it's expensive."

While no figures have been made public it is widely believed
that Netflix is spending hundreds of millions of pounds in acquiring these
properties adding to its vast library of content.